of them left lying on the church steps. The wicked incendiaries had burned
down twelve sheds, and it was not their fault that the whole village was
not destroyed, but only in consequence of the wind not being in the quarter
that suited their purpose. Meanwhile they tolled the bells in mockery and
scorn, to see whether any one would come and quench the fire; and that when
he and the three other young fellows came forward they fired off their
muskets at them, but, by God's help, none of them were hit. Hereupon his
three comrades jumped over the paling and escaped; but him they caught, and
had already taken aim at him with their firelocks, when his wife Lizzie
Kolken came out of the church with another troop and beckoned to them to
leave him in peace. But they stabbed Lene Hebers as she lay in childbed,
speared the child, and flung it over Claus Peer's hedge among the nettles,
where it was yet lying when they came away. There was not a living soul
left in the village, and still less a morsel of bread, so that unless the
Lord took pity on their need they must all die miserably of hunger.

(Now who is to believe that such people can call themselves Christians!)

I next inquired, when he had done speaking (but with many sighs, as any
one may guess), after my cottage; but of that they knew nought save that
it was still standing. I thanked the Lord therefore with a quiet sigh;
and having asked old Seden what his wife had been doing in the church, I
thought I should have died for grief when I heard that the villains came
out of it with both the chalices and patens in their hands. I therefore
spoke very sharply to old Lizzie, who now came slinking through the
bushes; but she answered insolently that the strange soldiers had forced
her to open the church, as her goodman had crept behind the hedge, and
nobody else was there; that they had gone straight up to the altar, and
seeing that one of the stones was not well fitted (which, truly, was an
arch-lie), had begun to dig with their swords till they found the chalices